Page 75 of The Last Remaining Light

Then someone stepped onto the platform beside him.

Master Vaelor.

The square fell into total silence, broken only by the rain striking stone and crystal.

Even from above the crowd, Elowynn could see the composed severity in his posture beneath the regal, silver-threaded robes of the Auric Conclave.

He looked resolute.

“The Dimming spreads because humans and Astrari repeatedly mistake danger for curiosity,” Vaelor said calmly, his voice carrying through the resonance amplifiers surrounding the square. “Again and again our history teaches restraint. Again and again we ignore it. The Null condition has preceded catastrophe throughout recorded history. Collapsed observatories. Failed Starways. Entire cities lost during the Great Vigil.” His gaze swept across the gathered crowd. “Mercy cannot outweigh consequence.”

The prisoner—the boy—bit his quivering lip and closed his one good eye. Elowynn felt so cold and had reached out for the stone rail, steadying herself lest she fell to her knees.

Because all at once—she could only see Caelyn standing there instead.

Caelyn beneath those chains and in those metal restraints.

Caelyn surrounded by fearful strangers.

Caelyn listening while civilized people justified his death beneath whispers.

Her chest squeezed to the point of pain, and she could no longer inhale a proper breath.

This boy would receive no trial. No chance at understanding.

He would receive only fear after who knew how long of hiding before death was dealt.

Vaelor turned toward him, his face severe. “For the preservation of Aetheris and the safety of Veylspire, this sentence has been authorized by the Vigil Orders of the Celestial Spire.”

“I didn't mean to hurt anyone,” came the prisoner’s sudden voice through the rain. “I’m… I’m s-sorry,” he cried, his shoulders heaving.

The words shattered something inside her. He was so sincere. One frightened sentence from a terrified boy standing alone before an entire city. And no one Dimming cared! They just wanted to see him dealt with!

“Don’t pity it!” whispered one older Astrari.

“They should have drowned it at birth,” sneered another.

The resonance suppressors brightened and the astrylite lanterns guttered and sparked. Several of them burst in showers of crystal and twisted metal. Shards flew outward into the crowd, drawing startled cries as several onlookers stumbled back with blood beading from shallow cuts across their faces and exposed flesh.

People recoiled and shouted as fear rippled through the square.

“Kill it already!” someone shouted.

The boy began panicking now, breathing harder as the restraints flared brighter against his wrists.

“I tried to stop it,” he said desperately. “I tried—”

The execution happened quickly.

One of the Vigil executioners dressed in silver metal armor stepped forward through the fog; he carried a long, blackened spear threaded with muted blue and violet astrylite veins. Unlike ordinary resonance weaponry, the crystal embedded along its length emitted no glow at all. The light around it seemed to dim instead, as though the weapon had been carved to kill something resonance couldn't touch.

The prisoner looked up only once, terror filling his gaze.

Then the spear drove cleanly through his chest, directly into his heart.

Blood poured from the prisoner’s mouth as he choked on it, dark against the rain, and his body jerked once in an aggressive lurch as a brutal pulse erupted outward from the impact.

The air seemed to buckle. Every nearby lantern burst in the same instant, spraying crystal and metal across the square. Then just as quickly, a wave of pressure slammed through the crowd hard enough to stagger several people backward as the resonance rebalanced.